Vancouver Spring Gardens

I went to visit my brother in Vancouver for a few days. He and my sister in law have a new family, twins born in December. I did not plan to see much in the way of gardens, as it is still April, but it turned out that spring arrived early in Vancouver. I have only visited there twice, once when I was eight years old and paid no attention to flowers, and once in November when there was not much left to see in gardens. I planned on putting all my attention on two beautiful baby girls, but as the sun was shining for two days in a row, we did manage to get one or two babies outside for a walk. I also went on the back balcony a couple of times with a tired, cranky baby for some fresh air and distraction. Each time I could not help but be overwhelmed by the lush exuberance of the flowering trees and bushes. I had just missed the tulips and daffodils, although the stems were still visible with a few last blooms. What struck me is that there were trees abloom with flowers I have never seen growing outside, or in such sizes. Camelia and rhododendron trees, huge electric pink azalea bushes, cherry trees and magnolias and red and pink bushes which we could not identify.

This is the view from the lane next to my brother's house (above). The photos here are taken on a quick walk down the block, in their front yard and back yard and around the corner. It took me about 5 minutes to cover this area even while stopping to take photos. I took almost 60 photos, and between feeding and changing diapers my brother and I chose the best pics to post. He recently took some photography lessons and showed me some tricks to improve the lighting of the photos. I did not pick the brightest time of the day, I went out when the babies were quiet so it was already getting cloudier. I did not let him change the colours beyond what they actually looked like in the sun. It really was this spectacular. To the right is his neighbour.

My brother says that Vancouver has been encouraging citizens to cultivate green spaces on sidewalks, so technically this is not guerilla gardening, nor city gardens.

To the right you can see yellow tulips, orange poppies, pink bleeding hearts and something electric pink.  I am not sure what the purple flowers are, maybe irises. It seems that Vancouver explodes into blossom where Montreal gradually phases into spring.

Every possible variety of red leaved, green leaved and red stemmed Japanese maples adorn lawns and public spaces.

These flowers were growing in front of my brother's house. After inquiring about what they are, my sister-in-law's mother (a first time contributor to my blog, thank you Joan!) has identified them as hellebore. They do not grow in my neck of the woods unfortunately because they are so pretty!

This is the view from my brother's back balcony. Rhododendrons, magnolias, Japanese maple and those pink flowered bushes are in the foreground. The pink on the lower left at the back is an azalea bush in full bloom, which looks solid from a distance. I did not include the camelia tree, which my brother called sunny side up egg flowers, because the flowers were starting to turn brown on the edges. I arrived a few days past their peak.

Here is the front yard. On the right and below, the red azaleas and purple periwinkles are a bit small to see in detail.

Never mind the snowstorm, I'm planting inside!

We had another snowstorm yesterday. It was not as big and bad as predicted because the worst of it passed by north of Montreal, but we had snow and ice pellets and freezing rain and slippery roads. Rumour has it that I shouldn't take off my snow tires yet, because there may be more coming. Technically we are five weeks from the magic moment when there is not supposed to be any more risk of frost, that it Victoria Day weekend (around May 21). Just before the snow hit, my daffodils, hyacinths and crocuses were popping up. I am not sure how they are managing under several inches of snow but it was warmer today and things were melting.

While this was going on outside, Josh was working on building a temporary seed sprouting centre in our basement. He built suspended shelves with hanging full spectrum fluorescent lights which his parents bought for us. The set-up is right behind me as I write on my computer in the basement office corner. I picked up some small plastic square baskets from the dollar store as trays to catch any water overflow and allow me to eventually transport the seedlings outside to harden when the weather warms up. I did not use jiffy trays this year, but seeded directly into earth in small pots and plastic cups reused from last year's seedlings, as well as some juice cartons, yogourt containers etc. I was careful to put large holes in the bottom of these so that we would not have the drainage problems I had last year once I moved the seedlings outside and it rained. Josh put gravel at the bottom of each pot and container covered by some potting soil. I have planted mostly seeds left over from last year because we had a lot. I hope they work as well still. I put in three types of basil seed (monmouth, sweet basil and bush basil (Superbo) we ordered from Richters. The tomatoes I used were the ever favorite San Marzano from Landreth, a couple of those amazing chocolate cherry tomatoes and a few of the large chocolates in the hope they do better this year. I planted two varieties of sunflowers, one small decorative multicoloured variety and some giant yellow ones. I have no idea where I am going to put them this year. I put in two types of peppers, goat horn and hot thai peppers. I am also sprouting poppy seeds indoors, because the seeds I planted directly outside all died. I decided to make markers using plastic knives left over from my kids' birthday parties, labelled with a laundry marker. They are totally water proof and reusable. We bought transparent shower curtains and covered the pots and shelves completely to keep in humidity. It is not quite as enclosed as the jiffy trays but we will see how it does. I will also be starting a half-dozen sweet potatoes once I buy toothpicks to suspend them in water. I picked up some dalia bulbs at the dollar store, and Chloe gave me some freesia bulbs which I hope to plant (indoors!) tomorrow.


Next we will be arranging to get some fermented manure from a neighbour of my in-laws out in the country, and hopefully some hay from our friends Jack and Amy. We did not have enough last year and hope to be more generous, although supplies are a bit scarce in the city.

My brother in Vancouver has been teasing me about cherry blossoms already in bloom. Still winter here...